python import error

Question

I'm trying to use some python-2.1 code to control another program (ArcGIS). The version of python I am using is 2.5. I am getting the following error message when I run the code.

<type'exceptions.ImportError'>: No module named win32api
Failed to execute (polyline2geonetwork2).

I tried installing pywin32-214.win32-py2.5.exe but I still get the same error message. I can't figure out if I need to do anything to my original python install so it knows that I have installed this.

I think the problematic part of my code is the following:

import win32com.client, sys, string, os, re, time, math

gp = win32com.client.Dispatch("esriGeoprocessing.GpDispatch.1")
conn = win32com.client.Dispatch(r'ADODB.Connection')

Thanks for your help - I am quite new to python.

Answer 1

Your sys.path is

['C:\\Documents and Settings\\david\\My Documents\\GIS_References\\public\\funconn_public', 'C:\\Python25\\Lib\\idlelib', 'C:\\Program Files\\ArcGIS\\bin', 'C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\python25.zip', 'C:\\Python25\\DLLs', 'C:\\Python25\\lib', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\plat-win', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\lib-tk', 'C:\\Python25', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\Pythonwin']

and winapi.py is located in C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\isapi\test\build\bdist.win32\winexe\temp.

Notice that this directory is not listed in your sys.path. To get things working, you'll need to put C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\isapi\test\build\bdist.win32\winexe\temp in your sys.path.

It appears winapi.py is not yet installed. It is in a test\build...\temp directory. I don't know much about Windows+Python. Maybe there is documentation that came with winapi.py which explains how the installation is suppose to be achieved.

A quick (but ugly) fix is to manually insert the needed directory into sys.path. By this I mean, you can edit polyline2geonetwork.py and put

import sys
sys.path.append(r'C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\isapi\test\build\bdist.win32\winexe\temp')

near the top of the file.